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Nick’s footsteps were solid beside her. If he was anxious or uncomfortable at all, it didn’t show. Dee was grateful; she felt awkward enough asking him to come so she wouldn’t have to go alone.
“Can’t believe they want his body back after all this time.” He shook his head. “Why would they send you to do it? They know your history with the guy.“
"I, uh.” Dee cleared her throat, her boot landing just a little too heavily on the cement. “I volunteered."
He faltered and had to do a quickstep to catch up. "Any reason for that?"
She exhaled slowly. "It’s… complicated."
"Situations like these usually are,” he agreed, tentatively noncommittal. “But I thought you had reached closure with him. As much as anyone can with their husband’s killer."
"I thought so, too but…"
She sighed and halted at the top of the steps. The light flickered in the hallway below, as it had the first time they’d come down here. Of course, no one was around to replace the bulbs.
"I think I would do everything over again exactly the same way. I can’t see another route I could have taken, knowing only what I knew then. But…” Nick gave her a nod, both agreement and encouragement to continue. “But I still – ” She shifted uncomfortably. “He was still the– It was–"
Her voice was rising into a panicked pitch. This shouldn’t have been so hard to articulate, but the narrow, decrepit hallways of the military base Kellogg had called home were closing in on her and she felt as if she was coming to kill him all over again. It was backwards, the fear, jumbled with all the things that had come after, that had come during. You’ll never find anything good in a military base, Ryan had told her, and he was right.
Nick raised a hand and set it on her shoulder. "Let’s call it emotionally charged,” he suggested.
She closed her eyes to block out the nauseating flickering and nodded rapidly.
“If you’re sure you wanna keep going, we’ll keep going. But there’s no shame in going back and saying you changed your mind,” he assured her.
“I’m okay,” she said quickly. “I can do this."
He was polite enough not to point out she was convincing herself.
They continued down the steps, weapons stowed in their holsters. Her hands itched, heartbeat irregular. What if he wasn’t dead? Of course he was. She dreamed about it most nights, when she wasn’t dreaming of other deaths. He had to be. But what if he wasn’t? She could smell death long before the doorway. He was decomposing, food for bacteria and maybe molerats. But what if he wasn’t? He’d lived for so long and gotten away with so much.
He was still alive, waiting for her. She was certain of it, so certain she wanted to scream it at Nick. And he would be angry, angry that she’d tried to kill him even though he’d fired the first shot, and she would have to kill him again. There would be no sleep left at all. Why the guilt over a a man whose hands were so stained? Because mine aren’t supposed to be.
His corpse lay in full view – or what was left of it. Still half-slumped over a desk with the shattered remains of a terminal caught under him. Thick streaks of old blood stained the floor, paint-like. Bone exposed. Dents in the wall where one combatant had slammed the other. Boot scuffs.
She stopped short at the doorway. If Dee didn’t know she had put him there, there was no way to tell who it was. A fluttering of guilt passed through her, quickly replaced by outrage: killers didn’t deserve a named grave. She wasn’t gonna get one. Why would he?
"I did that to him?” she wondered, stepping over a synth’s arm. Her stomach turned. The smell was dizzying. Nick was silent.
The fight was fuzzy, tinged with red and panic. He’d fired his gun only once. Then he was down and his nose crushed under her elbow. He’d yanked her hair, torn out a clump. She’d barely registered it. Fists and knees. Never let him out of range. Her clinches had always been murder in the ring, her grip relentless.
She’d stomped on him at some point, and that was the beginning of the end.
The only feature she remembered with any clarity was the scar. All others shifted with hundreds of others they’d shot, strangled, snapped. All she knew was that they matched now, long cuts over their left eyes. The Wasteland took people and made eager killers of them.
“So that’s what you did to me."
Dee didn’t answer. No point in addressing the voice. It only made her look strange to others, and he never went away until he’d made his point. She only stared sullenly at the corpse, unable to move much closer, waiting for him to finish his monologue.
"Knew I should’ve killed you in your tank."
But the voice was coming from behind her. Not whispered in her skull. She spun to look for the source, and found Nick staring blankly at her, the lights of his eyes dim. The bag the scientists had given her fell from her shoulder.
"Kellogg,” she said dumbly.
“There she is. Nice paint job. I thought bullets could get messy but you– you’re something else with those fists.” Nick’s face never moved, but the tone was genuinely complimentary. “One expert to another."
Her mouth opened and closed silently, fish-like.
"Take your time. It’s not like I got places to be."
Her fist clenched at her side. "Get out of there,” she hissed.
“Sorry. Can’t. For a while, I did want to – but seeing you look so guilty over my corpse? Worth every second I spent in here."
"Get out of Nick’s head, or so help me, I will rip you out.” She took a threatening step towards the detective with her leading foot.
His shoulders twitched, as if Kellogg meant to spread Nick’s hands in invitation. “Give it a try. See if Valentine appreciates that."
Dee shifted her weight back onto her heels, searching Nick’s face uncertainly. She had to be hallucinating, the voice she’d been hearing now projecting itself. Or had she, in her weakness, doomed her dearest friend to a lifetime with fucking Kellogg in his head? She could manage with him in her head, but to see Nick – And he’d never said –
"What do you want?” Her voice wouldn’t rise above a hoarse whisper.
There was a long silence. “To see my body. Such as it is."
She flung an arm out towards the rotting flesh and bits of bone that had once been Conrad Kellogg. "Congratulations. Now leave."
"Don’t give it to the Institute.” Another pause. There was a quiet desperation as he added, “Please."
Dee stared open-mouthed. All of the witticisms died on her tongue as she realized he was asking her for help. There was a thrill to knowing she was going to throw it in his face. "What does it matter to you? You’re just a copy."
"Like Valentine’s just a copy?” he demanded. “Don’t be immature."
She closed her eyes and shook her head. It was easier to listen if she wasn’t looking at Nick. If she pretend Kellogg was just a radio. "Amari said there would be mnemonic impressions. That they’d overwrite themselves and go away after a while."
"Do I sound like a fucking mnemonic impression to you?” he snarled.
She scowled. “It’s just decomposing meat, Kellogg, why does it matter?"
"Because it was my decomposing meat!"
Dee rubbed her face viciously and groaned. "I can’t believe this is a conversation I’m having,” she complained, voice muffled by her hands.
“Do you think they didn’t offer to make me a synth as their tech got better?"
She froze, hands still over her eyes. "Why didn’t you accept?"
He laughed. It was sad and hoarse, even from Nick’s throat. "Because then I’d never die.” He let her absorb that. “I’m giving you advice free of charge, here: you don’t escape the Institute. You’re in or you’re dead. That’s the only way out."
"What a pathetic excuse."
"I’m not excusing. I did what I did."
Her hands fell from her face and she stared at her boots. They were coming apart so soon. "Are you sorry?”
He grunted in hesitation.
“Are you sorry?” she repeated, louder, looking up at the body Kellogg had chosen to haunt. “For what you did? To me? To my family?” Her mouth twisted. “To anyone at all?” She opened her eyes in time to catch the Nick’s eyelights flickering.
Kellogg was silent, but she was certain he was still there. “Not for the things you want me to be sorry for."
"I see. In that case – no,” she said with a faint smile. “You don’t sound like a mnemonic impression. You sound like one desperate asshole who’s finally gotten what’s coming to him.” She motioned again to the corpse. “I thought that was vengeance but this is so much better."
"Please. I don’t have anything to offer you in return. Burn it, bury it, feed it to a mutant, I don’t care. Just don’t let them have it."
"No.” The coldness of her tone surprised her. But maybe that was what two hundred years of freezing did to a person.
He was growing alarmed. “Dee, I’m asking you to do the humane thing– "
"You lost that right when you shot my husband and handed my kid to the Institute, Connie,” she snarled, resuming her forward momentum towards Kellogg’s voice. “I was on the fence about handing your body over. I was considering taking a piss on it for my own peace of mind and then leaving it for the mirelurks. But you know what?” She stopped a foot away from Nick and looked him in the eyes, seeking out the hijacker. “Fuck you, Kellogg."
He let out a wordless snarl and she half expected Nick’s arms to move to choke or hit her, but there was nothing.
She smiled at him, all teeth. "How does it feel to be on the other side of the glass, you piece of shit?"
There was an inhalation. Then he laughed. "I thought you would get it. But I guess you and me? We’re not so different, after all."
Her fist slammed on the wall past Nick’s head. "Fuck you, Kellogg! Fuck you! I don’t kill kids for money!” She beat her fist again, louder, a dent forming in the wall. “We’re nothing alike!"
"Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Nick’s eyelights flickered back on and his balance wavered. “Easy, easy!"
Her fist slammed one final time against the wall before she registered the familiar intonation. "Nicky?”
They stared blankly at each other a moment until he slid out from between her and the wall. Dee lowered her arm slowly but eyed him in partial concern and partial suspicion. His gaze lingered on the crack spreading from the hole her fist had made. Nick’s hand clamped onto his hat in mild shock. Then his eyes returned to her.
“Was it Kellogg?” His voice was quiet.
She crossed her arms at her stomach, grasping opposing elbows, sinking uncertainly into herself. “You never said.”
He skimmed over the leftovers smeared across the floor. “I already worry I’m not myself sometimes. Having an extra voice doesn’t help.”
It was easier to follow his gaze to the body. “I hear him, too,” she whispered, relieved and mortified to admit it aloud for the first time.
“You never said.”
She shrugged. “Penance. I’m sorry I infected you with him. We can go back to Amari, dig into it more…” She trailed off, the sudden awareness of what she’d risked in her rage making her clamp down on the rest of her emotions.
He couldn’t – or wouldn’t – look away from Kellogg’s corpse. “I should meet you outside,” he suggested, though it failed to sound casual. “Let you finish up in here.”
“Sure,” she said hoarsely. “Could use a lookout.”
The synth gave a half-nod and shuffled out before she’d even really finished speaking. She couldn’t blame him. If she could leave now, she would. But she couldn’t help but feel something in their friendship had surely faltered. All because a Kellogg had opened his big, stupid mouth.
Conversely, the parasitic Kellogg in her own head was conspicuously silent. Maybe you know better than to argue with me.
And maybe she was getting tired of tiptoeing around him and worrying what would provoke his unasked-for opinions.
She unholstered her gun and and fired a shot into the already-crumbling corpse. When that didn’t elicit a remark, she stepped closer and fired again. And again and again, and reloaded, and kept firing, the compressed anger driving her closer despite the smell. Until he was riddled with holes, and she was breathing heavily.
Still the Kellogg in her mind was silent, nowhere to be found. Maybe he had never been.
Transferring the meat mass – it could hardly be called a corpse anymore – into the sanitary bag the Institute provided was a chore, and the bulk of it remained on the table, maggot-filled. It resembled the dinner table of a super mutant.
That’s what awaits you.
“Is that all you have to say?” she mumbled aloud. But she wasn’t sure if Kellogg had said it, or if it was her own condemnation.
It was useless, a part of her noted as she stashed the final hunk of meat. Between her fists and the bullets, she’d rendered most of it unsalvageable. Tech and flesh alike was in pieces. It would take nothing short of a miracle to piece any of it together, let alone restore it enough to access data.
“Happy now?” she demanded.
Still no response.
She sighed, hoisting the bag over her shoulder and making her slow way up to the surface. Fucker.